Love's Mysteries
by punchkicker15
Summary: AU, set after the events of "Anne". in which Anne Steele and Tara Maclay both ended up in Seattle, a city with a lot less supernatural activity than LA or Sunnydale. Written for femslash minis prompt for Tara/Anne, scraped knees, teenage runaways, and poorly-applied makeup.


"How do I look?" Anne asked.

Tara gave Anne a once-over. "You have way more eye shadow on the left than the right."

Anne added more eye shadow. "Ok, how about now?"

"Your lipstick is smudged."

Anne checked the mirror. "Where? I don't see-"

Tara swooped in for a kiss. "There," she said.

Anne grinned, ran her hands through Tara's hair. "Anywhere else it might be smudged?"

They kissed again. As always, being with Anne felt like a small miracle to Tara.

***  
Afterwards, they walked to work, holding hands, bickering over whose turn it was to talk to the obnoxious donor who wanted to micromanage everything.

About three blocks away from the teen shelter, Anne stopped, looking at a couple across the street. "Isn't that Lisa?"

Tara stared at the couple. Even after two years in Seattle, she still wasn't used to the dark winter mornings. As they passed under a street light, Tara saw that it was Lisa, one of the runaways from Anne's teen shelter. The guy had Lisa by the shoulders and was leaning in uncomfortably close to her.

Lisa stomped on the guy's foot and ran away. The guy yelped, then ran after her, impossibly fast.

Anne crossed the street, putting herself between the guy and Lisa. The guy's face morphed into something inhuman and monstrous.

Anne said, "Oh, for fuck's sake. Not here, too. Why is it always vampires?" She took a letter opener out of her pocket, and tried to stab the-vampire, that's what he was. A demon.

Tara tried to think of spells that might help. Most of the ones she remembered were general protection spells, the kind that she'd cast over the teen shelter and over the apartment she and Anne shared. The kind of spells to cast _before_ anything bad happened. She'd never had to use magic in the midst of a crisis.

The vampire knocked Anne down to her knees. Something clenched in Tara's chest, her doubts disappeared in the wake of Tara's magic rushing through her, _fastfastwaytoofast_. It felt like her head was cracking open in several different places, but Tara held on until the magic coalesced into a ball in her hand. She shouted, "Obfuscate!" and threw it at the vampire. It covered his face in a thick layer of sludge. He struggled to pull it off.

Anne stood up and plunged the letter opener through the vampire's chest. Tara watched the vampire disintegrate, fighting the feeling of righteous satisfaction. He'd tried to hurt her girl and Lisa, but there but for the grace of the Goddess . . .

Lisa screamed. Anne and Tara rushed to her. Lisa jerked away, staring at Tara's face. Tara's head was reverberating with magic aftershocks; she hadn't realized that blood was gushing from her nose. Then Tara caught the look of mistrust and suspicion on Anne's face, and that hurt way more than anything else.

***  
They walked Lisa back to the teen center. Lisa insisted on taking her little sister back to Arizona immediately. She glared at Tara and said, "At least we know what the worst thing at home is."

When she'd gone, Tara asked Anne, "Are you ok?"

Anne said, "Yeah. Just a couple of scraped knees. I'll be fine. What the hell happened out there?" She crossed her arms over her chest, and gave Tara the look Anne reserved for the runaways when they tried to con her.

"So, I'm a w-witch . . ." As if this moment weren't awful enough, Tara's stutter had returned. She hated the way it made her feel like a bashful six-year-old, instead of a grown woman.

"Why didn't you tell me? C'mon, Tara, we've been going out for a year. I thought we could trust each other."

Tara thought about bringing up the secrets that Anne kept. Like the runaway who showed up at the center a few months ago who kept calling Anne "Lily". Or the tattoo that Anne had removed by some sort of magic, sometime before she met Tara. Or that wooden letter opener that Anne insisted on carrying everywhere, because it was her "good luck charm." It had been pretty lucky against the vampire-but Anne had never mentioned that she knew anything about them.

Tara thought about saying that she hadn't brought it up in the beginning because she thought the relationship would be short-lived. That she'd been sure that someone as gorgeous and smart and funny as Anne would dump Tara fairly quickly. Then later, when the relationship lasted longer than she'd thought it would, Tara didn't know how to bring the subject up.

But those were all just excuses. Anne had deserved to know, from the beginning of the relationship, who and what Tara was. Tara hadn't because she had wanted the relationship so much, and had been afraid of losing her chance for it.

Neither of them had ever talked about love. It was only now, when Tara could see how hurt Anne was, that Tara could see that Anne loved her. How bittersweet to discover that, just before it all fell apart.

It was going to be so hard for Tara to break up now, but it was the right thing to do. Tara could at least spare Anne the pain of discovering that Tara wasn't just a witch, but also a monster.


End file.
